© 2007 Paul Marxhausen
Score
Lyrics
MIDI
MP3 demo version
MP3 live performance, 20th anniversary of Faith Lutheran Stephen Ministry
PowerPoint
YouTube lyric video
Comments: One of the most powerful ministries in the Church
today is Stephen Ministry , where men and women are
trained to meet the critical spiritual and emotional needs of hurting people.
Faith Lincoln has been blessed to have Stephen Ministers serving us for 20 years, and I was asked
to write a song that commemorated this work. This song was the result. In common usage, saying that somebody
is "prepared" for something means they have prepared themselves for some eventuality,
which is true of those who train for this ministry, but there is the more important implication that
we all are created, formed, and used of God for His purposes.
In 2025, this song began to take on a new application for me as I watched people who reacted to government-sanctioned
cruelty and societal coldness by reaching out to help the neighbor, the stranger, the alien, the widow, the orphan,
the downcast. Scripture repeatedly emphasizes their value in God's eyes and at the final judgement Jesus holds
our treatment of them as equivalent to our treatment of Him.